It’s Friday and welcome to the second edition of Frozen Food Friday. On the debut episode of this series we sampled a classic TV dinner and this week we’re going to try another classic frozen food entree, the Banquet Beef Pot Pie.

The Memory

Banquet and Swanson were the two leading frozen food companies back in the ‘60’s and this is how I remember the packaging. One thing has always bothered me about the Banquet frozen pot pies and we’ll address that shortly.

This Week’s Frozen Food Dinner

Here’s the current packaging for the Banquet Beef Pot Pie. The overall look isn’t that different but while I’m not an expert copywriter like those ad wizards over at Simantel, I think you should never use the words, “flaky” and “scratch” in a food description. It brings up a mental image of the heartbreak of psoriasis and that’s just never a good thing.

Peas

Peas are what has always bothered me about pot pies. I hate peas and don’t understand why people put them in pot pies and other dishes. I’ve always picked them out and refuse to eat them. My mom used to always say, “You can’t taste them,” which is true and further adds to my argument: If you can’t taste them then why put them in the fucking pot pie? Peas look like ass droppings from a baby Jolly Green Giant and I for one steadfastly refuse to eat them!

The Frozen Food Dinner And Something Disturbing

Here’s the pie before we place it in the MBIP World Headquarters oven. A chunk of the crust is gone and the way it’s methodically cut out, makes it look like it was done on purpose. This disturbs me.

Cooking Instructions And Into The Oven

I’ve preheated the oven and it’s time to pop the pie inside. On the debut episode I did get some comments saying I should microwave these dinners, but I prefer to do it the old-school way. It just seems a more natural way to cook frozen food. I may do a special microwave edition of this down the road. The completely unnecessary instructions all in capital letters are: REMOVE CAREFULLY; IT’S HOT!” Something that’s been baking in a 400 degree oven for over a half an hour is going to be hot? What a perfect, “no shit, Sherlock” moment. Maybe Paris Hilton is moonlighting as their copywriter.

Out Of The Oven

Here it is, 34 minutes later coming out of the MBIP World Headquarters oven.

The Pot Pie

Well, the crust certainly got burnt up on the outside perimeter and there’s something fairly scary going on with this pot pie that we’ll address right now...

Yikes, no wonder that cut out piece of crust disturbed me! It looks like it’s spitting out cancerous chewing tobacco juice out of it’s pie hole. Ugh! Not the most appetizing way to start off this dinner, but let’s be brave and continue onwards.

Oh my...it just gets more and more frightening. I picked out a chunk of the crust and look what’s hiding over there in the corner, a little baby Jolly Green Giant ass dropping. Let’s correct this situation toot sweet!

Okay that’s better...at least until you bite into it. The crust tastes like burnt cardboard and the cancerous chewing tobacco juice has a stomach-turning mucus consistency to it. It’s like someone with a horrible cold blew their nose into cardboard and then spit tobacco juice on top of it.

The vegetables are pretty tasteless but that cancer gravy is starting to make me feel somewhat sick.

The “beef” is sickeningly spongey and tastes like a cow that was fed chewing tobacco instead of grass.

The one highlight of this burnt-up, cancerous/mucus pot pie is the fact that it only had three peas in it.

The Frozen Food Rating (Four Is Best, One Is The Worst)

One Mister Freeze—While I’ll probably never eat one of these things again, they are small, so you’re done before you actually start heaving the pie back up while thinking about chewing tobacco cancer, mucus and ass droppings from a baby Jolly Green Giant. Plus there were only three peas, so it had that going for it. We'll see you all tomorrow.